Cerulean Phoenix
by skandrae
Summary: An awakening...but not who you would expect...


1 Cerulean Phoenix  
  
C&C welcomed and appreciated. Flames tolerated if they are literate.  
  
Spoilers: Um, the end of Episode 22??? (I'm pretty sure it's Episode 22…)  
  
  
  
She could feel herself returning, slowly and painfully, to physical and mental consciousness. The darkness receded in slow waves and the voice of her other self quieted and finally disappeared. For the first time in many years, she was in control of her body and her mind. But where was her body? She opened dark blue eyes to examine her surroundings.  
  
She was lying on her side, covered in rubble, and rain beat down mercilessly on her. Experimentally, she pushed her arm up ~her own arm now, after so long~ and rubble shifted, tiny avalanches of wood and brick coursing down her body. She pushed and pushed until there was enough room for her to stand. From destruction, she was reborn.  
  
As lightening flashed about her, she examined the debris around her. She knew where she was and why the place looked the way it did. The reason was lying on his side, covered in rubble as she had been. "Nagi," she whispered, hearing her own voice, richer and stronger than her other voice. The other's voice. "Naoe Nagi."  
  
She knelt, noting idly the ridiculous outfit she was wearing. The last time she had been in control of what she wore she had also dressed as child, but that had been appropriate to her age. She was seventeen now, nearly eighteen, and innocence had been stolen away from her forever. The men in her lives had taken her childhood and forced her to maintain the appearance of her loss.  
  
Most of the men in her lives, she amended. This boy before her had taken nothing from her. He had given her other self love and asked only love in return. She remembered the feel of his lips against hers when he professed his love. She felt the slight weight of his body against hers as he pressed her to the ground, begging her not to fight. Most painfully, she remembered the wiry arms that held her as blood poured from her body, and the screams that exploded from him as he destroyed everything around them. Was it his scream that led her back from the comforting darkness in which she had dwelt for so long?  
  
Gently, almost reverently, she lifted rubble from his prone form. Like a reversed burial, she freed Nagi's body from the destruction he had wrought. His right arm was stretched out. Their hands had been clasped when she returned to her self. Dimly, she recalled the blonde assassin ~Youji, the playboy, who loved Neu's former self~ placing their hands together, thinking them both dead.  
  
He was breathing, she noted. It was slow and shallow, but breathing nonetheless. Good. If it had been his love, his despair, that had brought her back, then she owed him a great debt. Her other self had genuinely loved him, as much as it was possible for that poor wretch to love anyone.  
  
She pitied the child-woman as much as she had depended on her. The other self had arrived at the time of the first attack by her father, when she, her true self, was unprepared and unable to protect herself. The other self was more childlike, able to cope with the horror of their mutual violation by descending into a kind of madness, while she ~the coward, the frightened one~ stepped back into hazy warmth. For years, she had remained distant, watching the other self interact with other people, watching the other self get hurt and abused.  
  
But a thrown knife had ended the illusion of distance. The knife the one- eyed man ~"Farfarello," the other's voice whispered in her memory~ had thrown had lodged in her chest, but, more than flesh, it had penetrated the numbing warmth of her refuge. The only pain greater that she could remember was her father's rape; this time, however, she was stronger than the pain. It was time for her return.  
  
The other had realized she, Tot of the childlike ways, was dying, and apologized to Nagi for not being able to live with him. But Nagi, not knowing Tot was only an illusion, misunderstood and lashed out at the Fates, wreaking destruction. His screams had been a beacon for her returning mind.  
  
She finished clearing the rubble from his thin body. She knew that the bodies of the other two members of Schreient were still buried, along with "Papa" Masufumi, but she felt no need to uncover them. Tot had depended on them for survival; now that she had control of her own mind again, she had nothing but contempt for them. They had been intelligent, beautiful women, thoroughly capable of making their way independently in the world, but had chosen to depend on a man, a singularly worthless man, to give purpose to their lives. Had Tot remained, she might have mourned them, but Tot was gone.  
  
From the corner of her eye, she spotted a glimmer of pink. Rabbit-chan was pinned under a piece of wood. She reached over and plucked it from the wreckage. She met its unseeing gaze clearly, remembering the feel of its fur under her chin. Sometimes, in the past, she thought that when Tot heard Rabbit-chan talking to her, Tot was actually hearing her voice from the darkness. Her own thoughts, being amplified and projected to the illusion who protected her.  
  
She laid the stuffed bunny next to Nagi. Hopefully, when he woke, he would think that she had been holding it when she died. She hoped he would think that Tot's body had disappeared into the void created by his telekinetic outburst. It wouldn't do to have him try to find Tot now that she was gone.  
  
Having done all she could do, all she was inclined to do, she rose again from the wreckage. She pulled her wet hair out of the bizarre knots Tot had kept it in, shaking free of another childish thing. She looked down at her outfit again, shaking her head. It would do for now, she supposed. But not for much longer.  
  
Striding forth from the destruction of her rebirth, a phoenix in the rain, Hibino Nanami, called "Death" by those who claimed to know her, vanished into the forest, heading unerringly towards Tokyo and her future. 


End file.
